The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04. Коллектив авторов
song;" "In genuine prose all words should be printed in italics;" "Catholicism is naïve Christianity; Protestantism is sentimental." The sheer whimsicality of phrase seems to be at times its own excuse for being, as in an explanation of certain elegiac poems as "the sensation of misery in the contemplation of the silliness of the relations of banality to craziness;" but there are many sentences which go deep below the surface—none better remembered, perhaps, than the dictum, "The French Revolution, Fichte's Doctrine of Science, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the greatest symptoms of our age."
In the Athenæum both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention terza rima, ottava rima, the Spanish gloss, and not a few very notable sonnets.
The literary criticisms of the Athenæum are characteristically free and aggressive, particularly in the frequent sneers at the flat "homely" poetry of sandy North Germany. At the end of the second volume, the "faked" Literary Announcements are as daring as any attempts of American newspaper humor. When the sum of the contents and tendency of the journal is drawn, it is a strange mixture of discriminating philosophy, devoted Christianity, Greek sensuousness, and pornographic mysticism. There is a never-ending esthetic coquetry with the flesh, with a serious defense of some very Greek practices indeed. All of this is thoroughly typical of the spirit of the Romantic school, and it is by no means surprising that Friedrich's first book, the novel Lucinda (1799), should stand as the supreme unsavory classic in this field. That excellent divine, Schleiermacher, exalted this document of the Rights of the Flesh as "a pæan of Love, in all its completeness," but it is a feeble, tiresome performance, absolutely without structure, quite deserving the saucy epigram on which it was pilloried by the wit of the time:
Pedantry once of Fancy begged the dole
Of one brief kiss; she pointed him to Shame.
He, impotent and wanton, then Shame's favors stole.
Into the world at length a dead babe came—
"Lucinda" was its name.
The preaching of "religion," "womanliness," and the "holy fire of divine enjoyment" makes an unedifying mélange: "The holiest thing in any human being is his own mind, his own power, his own will;" "You do all according to your own mind, and refuse to be swayed by what is usual and proper." Schleiermacher admired in it that "highest wisdom and profoundest religion" which lead people to "yield to the rhythm of fellowship and friendship, and to disturb no harmony of love." In more prosaic diction, the upshot of its teaching was the surrender to momentary feelings, quite divorced from Laws or Things. The only morality is "full Humanity;" "Nature alone is worthy of honor, and sound health alone is worthy of love;" "Let the discourse of love," counsels Julius, "be bold and free, not more chastened than a Roman elegy"—which is certainly not very much—and the skirmishes of inclination are, in fact, set forth with an almost antique simplicity. Society is to be developed only by "wit," which is seriously put into comparison with God Almighty. As to practical ethics, one is told that the most perfect life is but a pure vegetation; the right to indolence is that which really makes the discrimination between choice and common beings, and is the determining principle of nobility. "The divine art of being indolent" and "the blissful bosom of half-conscious self-forgetfulness" naturally lead to the thesis that the empty, restless exertion of men in general is nothing but Gothic perversity, and "boots naught but ennui to ourselves and others." Man is by nature "a serious beast; one must labor to counteract this shameful tendency." Schleiermacher ventured, it is true, to raise the question as to whether the hero ought not to have some trace of the chivalrous about him, or ought not to do something effective in the outer world—and posterity has fully supported this inquiry.
Friedrich's next most important move was to Paris (1802), where he gave lectures on philosophy, and attempted another journal. Here he began his enthusiastic studies of the Sanskrit language and literature, which proved to have an important influence on the development of modern philology. This is eminently true of his work On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1808). In 1804 he removed to Cologne, where he entered with great eagerness into the work of re-discovering the medieval Lower Rhenish School of religious art and Gothic architecture. In 1808 he, with his wife Dorothea (the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, who years before this time had left her home and family to become his partner for life), entered the Roman Catholic church, the interests of which engaged much of his energies for the remainder of his life.
He lived most of the time in Vienna, partly engaged in the literary service of the Austrian government, partly in lecturing on history and literature. He died in 1829 in Dresden, whither he had gone to deliver a course of lectures.
Friedrich Schlegel's philosophy of life was based upon the theory of supremacy of the artist, the potency of poetry, with its incidental corollaries of disregard for the Kantian ideal of Duty, and aversion to all Puritanism and Protestantism. "There is no great world but that of artists," he declared in the Athenæum; "artists form a higher caste; they should separate themselves, even in their way of living, from other people." Poetry and philosophy formed in his thought an inseparable unit, forever joined, "though seldom together—like Castor and Pollux." His interest is in "Humanity," that is to say, a superior type of the species, with a corresponding contempt for "commonness," especially for the common man as a mere machine of "duty." On performances he set no great store: "Those countenances are most interesting to me in which Nature seems to have indicated a great design without taking time to carry it out."
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), more simply known as "Wilhelm," was the more balanced, dignified, and serene nature, and possessed in a far higher degree than Friedrich the art of steering his course smoothly through life. Of very great significance in his training were his university years at Göttingen, and his acquaintance there with the poet Bürger, that early apostle of revolt from a formal literature, whose own life had become more and more discredited and was destined to go out in wretchedness and ignominy; the latter's fecundating activities had never been allowed full scope, but something of his spirit of adventure into new literary fields was doubtless caught by the younger man. Bürger's attempts at naturalizing the sonnet, for instance, are interesting in view of the fact that Wilhelm Schlegel became the actual creator of this literary form among the Germans. Schlegel's own pursuits as a student were prevailingly in the field of Hellenism, in which his acquisitions were astounding; his influence was especially potent in giving a philological character to much of the work of the Romanticists. In Göttingen he became acquainted with one of the most gifted women which Germany has ever produced, Caroline, the daughter of the Göttingen professor Michaelis, at the time a young widow in the home of her father, and destined to become not only his wife, but the Muse of much of his most important work. This office she performed until the time of their unfortunate separation.
After finishing his university studies, Wilhelm was for a while private tutor in a wealthy family at Amsterdam, where conditions of living were most agreeable, but where a suitable stimulus to the inborn life of his mind was lacking. He accordingly gave up this position and returned, with little but hopes, to Germany. Then came a call which was both congenial and honorable. Schiller's attention had been drawn, years before, to a review of his own profound philosophical poem, The Artists, by an unknown young man, whom he at once sought to secure as a regular contributor to his literary journal, The New Thalia. Nothing came of this, chiefly because of Schlegel's intimate relations to Bürger at the time. Schiller had published, not long before, his annihilatory review of Bürger's poems, which did so much to put that poet out of serious consideration for the remainder of his days. In the meantime Schiller had addressed himself to his crowning enterprise, the establishing of a literary journal which should be the final dictator of taste and literary criticism throughout the German-speaking world. In 1794 the plan for The Hours was realized under favorable auspices, and in the same year occurred the death of Bürger. In 1796 Schiller invited Wilhelm to become one of the regular staff of The Hours, and this invitation Schlegel accepted, finding in it the opportunity to marry Caroline, with whom he settled in Jena in July of that year. His first contribution to The Hours